Resilient, fire-resistant article

ABSTRACT

This relates to a safety mattress, pillow, cushion, upholstered article and the like, comprising a layer of flexible sheet material covering an incombustible, resilient, low-bulk, highdensity mass of interlocked segments of fiber glass filaments that are free of organic binder and have a permanently distorted shape extending in a plurality of directions when said filaments are substantially free of tension.

I United States Patent [151 3,670,348

Irwin 51 June 20, 1972 54 RESILIENT, FIRE-RESISTANT 2,632,187" 37'1'6'53' Woofiendale ..5 354 ARTICLE 3,338,777 8/1967 Irwin ..16l/154 [72] Inventor: Winfield T. Irwin, Pittsburgh, Pa. Primary Examiner-Bobby R. Gay

Assistant Examiner-Andrew M. Calvert [73] Assignee. PPG Industries, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pa. Attorney chisholm & Spencer [22] Filed: May 13, 1968 [57] ABSTRACT [21] Appl. No.: 728,490,

.This relates to a safety mattress, pillow, cushion, upholstered article and the like, comprising a layer of flexible sheet materi- [52] U.S. Cl ..5/345, 5/355, 161/ 141 a] covering an incombustible, resilient, low-bulk, high-density [51] Int. Cl ..A47c 23/00, B2911 17/28 mass of interlocked segments of fiber glass filaments that are [58] Field of Search ..5/345, 354, 355, 334, 361 free of organic binder and have a permanently distorted shape 5/344; 161/ 141, 154 extending in a plurality of directions when said filaments are substantially free of tension. [56] References Cited N V UNITED ,STMES MEETS PKTEN'TEDmzo 1912 3, 70,348

INVENTOR WINFIELD 'T'. m Wm/ BY m 8% ATTORNEYS nssmssr, FIRE-RESISTANT ARTICLE BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to a mattress, pillow, cushion, upholstered article and the like that is highly resistant to combustion. More specifically, the present invention relates to the use of a resilient,low-bulk, high-density, dimensionally-stable fiber glass pad that is free of organic binder and that is inherently incombustible and incapable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures. In a preferred embodiment of this invention, this pad is used to control or resist the penetration of flame and/or the transmission of heat to a substantial body of material that is combustible and/or is capable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures.

In deep submergence vehicles, aircraft, spacecraft, decompression chambers, ships, boats, hospitals, hotels and homes, there is a great need for improved safety features in the construction of mattresses, pillows, cushions, upholstered articles and the like. In the event of a fire or the presence of intense heat, present constructions that contain a significant amount of combustible materials and/or organic materials that can produce toxic or noxious fumes present a serious hazard. The unfortunate ability of conventional mattresses, for example, to support combustion and/or emit toxic or noxious fumes when a fire occurs, the tragic consequences to life and property that stem therefrom, and the extreme difiiculty of extinguishing flame and smolder is all too well known. In situations where assistance in combating fire is not always adequate or readily available, or where escape from the vicinity of the fire is difficult, or even sometimes impossible, the extreme hazard to life and property is even more acute.

Accordingly, the present invention is directed towards curing or substantially alleviating the foregoing hazards. More specifically, this invention is directed towards providing animproved or safety construction for mattresses, pillows, cushions, upholstered articles and the like and, in particular, mattresses, pillows, cushions, upholstered articles and the like that contain material that is combustible and/or is capable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures. In the furtherance of the foregoing objective, the present invention proposes the use of an incombustible, low-bulk, high-density, resilient fiber glass mat or pad that is incapable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures to cover or replace said combustible and/or potentially fumeor smoke-emitting material. This pad comprises a plurality of segments of fiber glass filaments that are free of organic binder and have a permanently distorted shape extending in a plurality of directions when the filaments are substantially free of tension. Strength and dimensional stability are achieved in the construction of this pad by a needle loom operation that produces a pad or felt having segments of the fiber glass filaments that are substantially separated with respect to one another and other segments of the fiber glass filaments that have permanently crimped portions interlocked to one another. Furthermore, the present invention proposes the use of glass fibrous core material for the above-mentioned articles of manufacture, as well as a flexible glass fibrous cloth covering or ticking for the pad or felt that covers the core material.

These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from that which follows when taken in conjunction with the drawing.

The drawing is a perspective view, partly in section, of an article of manufacture embodying the principles of the present invention.

Referring to the drawing, there is shown a mattress 10, illustrating the principles of this invention, comprising a cushionable core or cushionable core material 12, an incombustible pad or pad material 14 enclosing said core, and a flexible sheet material or ticking 16 encasing both the pad 12 and the core 10.

In accordance with the present invention, the core 12 may be comprised of the same material as pad material 14 or it may comprise a mattress of conventional construction or a mattress core construction which would include the use of various combustible and/or potentially fume-emitting materials, such as cotton batting, cotton or synthetic fibrous cloth materials, down, feathers, kapok, foam elastomers, polyurethane, polyether or polyester, and various other natural and synthetic materials. Preferably, however, the core would be composed of a cushionable glass fibrous material that is inherently incombustible and that possesses excellent properties of strength and dimensional stability. Although, as will be apparent hereinafter, pad material 14 possesses these desirable characteristics, where lightness of weight is desired an incombustible material other than the pad material 14 is preferred. One such material is a strand-fiber composite glass fibrous material disclosed in U. S. Pat. No. 2,477,555, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.

According to this patent, the strand-fiber composite material is produced bydrawing, sizing and collecting glass fibers to form a strand. The strand thus formed is collected on a revolving package drum using conventional fiber glm strand-forming, -sizing and -collecting techniques. The strand package is then removed from the package drum and cut lengthwise. The

mately equal the circumference of the winding package. Due

to the manner of winding and removal of the strands from the package, the strands are oriented substantially parallel in the compact mass.

This mass of strand is then fed into a chopper apparatus which cuts and breaks up the mass of strands into shorter lengths. The cutting or chopping operation is conducted until the fiber strand lengths are reduced to the desired average length. The chopped strands are then passed through a picker apparatus which tears apart some of the strands into their individual fibers. The extent of strand separation is dependent upon the number of times the strand material is passed through the picker apparatus. The product thus produced is a composite of untom, unseparated strands 18 interspersed uniformly and randomly throughout a mat of randomlyoriented, finely-separated, individual glass filaments 20. After the desired ratio of strands to filaments has been produced, a powdered, curable, thermosetting binder is applied to the composite and cured to bind the strands and fibers together and produce the final cushionable mat or core material. Preferably, of course, for the purpose of this invention, this binder is a fire-resistant binder.

The preferred incombustible material that comprises the pad 14 of the present invention is disclosed in U. S. Pat. Nos. 3,317,296 and 3,338,777 to W. T. Irwin et al.

In accordance with the foregoing patents, the disclosures of which are also incorporated herein by reference, a permanently crimped, binder-free fiber glass tow is unwound from a package positioned on a horizontal spindle that is mounted on a suitable support. The crimped tow comprises a plurality of untwisted, longitudinally-extending, permanentlycrimped fiber glass strands which are free of organic binder and relatively movable with respect to each other, the filaments of the strand being permanently distorted and extending in a plurality of directions when substantially free of tension and being intertwined and relatively movable with respect to one another. As the crimped tow is unwound from the package it is threaded through an air nozzle. Air from a source enters the air nozzle through a conduit and impinges on the tow. The air expands the tow into a continuous cylindrical mass of helically-shaped, intertwined fiber glass filaments. The density of the expanded tow may be on the order of U500 of the density of the tow before expansion. The bulk of the expanded tow is very high as compared with that of the tow before expansion. The expanded tow, while possessing high bulk and low density, is nevertheless an integrated body because of the intertwining of the permanently crimped filaments therein.

With specific reference to U. S. Pat. No. 3,338,777, the expanded tow is then introduced into a conventional cutter device where the expanded cylindrical mass of crimped, helically-shaped and intertwined fiber glass filaments is severed into segments of a preselected size, as for example, one to four inches in length. Of course, other lengths or mixtures of various lengths may be used.

The segments are fed from the cutter to a garnett machine, of conventional construction, wherein the segments are distributed onto a moving conveyor or chain to form a low-density web. The step of air expansion may be dispensed with because the garnett machine is capable of separating the fibers of the tow to filament form after they have been cut to short lengths.

The web, having good fiber distribution because of the filamentary nature of the fibrous material, is conveyed from the garnett machine to a lapping machine where the webs are positioned in overlying, lapped relation. Preferably, the webs are positioned on or about a scrim material to provide additional strength and handleability in the finished product. The lapping machine is arranged to build up a mat or pad from successive layers of web to any preselected thickness or weight per unit area.

The lapped material is then conveyed to a needle loom where a plurality of barbed needles pass through the lapped webs and draw filaments from one layer of the web into adjacent layers to mechanically interlock the layers of web to one another. Because of the crimped configuration of the filaments, the needled pad or felt is mechanically strong. In the needle loom, the lapped web is reduced in thickness by the needling operation and the thickness of the resultant pad or felt product is generally controlled by the weight of the web and the number of needle punches per unit area. The apparatus employed in the process, i.e., the cutter machine, the garnett machine, the lapping machine and the needle loom, are conventional and their construction is well known in the textile art.

The needled, fibrous pad or felt, mechanically interlocked by the above process, consists essentially of fiber glass filaments. It is free of any and all organic binders, generally required in fiber glass mats or pads to provide mechanical strength for handling, etc. The layers of webbed material formed in the garnett machine are mechanically interlocked to each other by the permanently deformed fiber glass filaments extending through adjacent layers of webbed material. The webs themselves are relatively strong because of the interlocking configuration of the filaments distributed by the garnett machine. The interlocking of the layers of webbed material is enhanced by the crimped and deformed configuration of the respective fiber glass filaments. These deformed filaments are drawn through adjacent layers by the action of the barbed needles in the needle loom and mechanically interlocked or bond the layers to each other. As will be readily understood,

straight filaments cannot provide the same degree of interlocking as do the crimped, deformed filaments. Thus, the mechanical strength of the pad or felt product is superior to that produced using the usual, non-deformed filaments.

Fibrous, binder-free pads or felts formed by the described process have a very low thermal diffusivity. They also have great dimensional stability and resiliency, as well as mechanical strength. They retain their shape after extended use and are highly useful for applications wherein high temperatures, as for example, where temperatures upwards to 1200 F. may be encountered in the event of an outbreak of fire. Due to the glass fibrous composition and the absence of any organic binder, these felts are completely incombustible and incapable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures. When used to cover or enclose a core material that is combustible and/or capable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures, proper selection of the thickness of the felt will generally determine the length of time the felt will control or resist the penetration of flame and/or the transmission of heat to the core material.

The preferred covering material or ticking 16 used in accordance with this invention is a coronized, fibrous glass cloth produced from fine glass fibers or filaments having an average diameter below about 0.00021 inch. Glass fibrous cloths of this nature, as well as coronized glass fibrous cloths generally, are incombustible and incapable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures. However, conventional covering or ticking materials may also be used in accordance with this invention. Notwithstanding, it will be appreciated that the full potential of this invention will best be realized when the covering or ticking material, the pad and the core are all composed of materials that are incombustible and incapable of emitting toxic or noxious fumes at elevated temperatures.

What is claimed is:

1. A resilient, fire-resistant safety mattress, pillow, cushion, upholstered article and the like comprising a cushionable core, a pad covering said core, said pad comprising an incombustible, resilient, low-bulk, high-density mass of interlocked segments of fiber glass filaments that are free of organic binder and incapable of emitting toxic fumes at elevated temperatures and that have a permanently distorted shape extending in a plurality of directions when said filaments are substantially free of tension, and a flexible sheet material covering said pad, wherein said cushionable core material comprises a strand-fiber composite material composed of randomlyoriented, essentially uniformly-distributed glass fiber strands interspersed throughout a mass of randomly-oriented and essentially uniformly-distributed individual glass fibers. 

1. A resilient, fire-resistant safety mattress, pillow, cushion, upholstered article and the like comprising a cushionable core, a pad covering said core, said pad comprising an incombustible, resilient, low-bulk, high-density mass of interlocked segments of fiber glass filaments that are free of organic binder and incapable of emitting toxic fumes at elevated temperatures and that have a permanently distorted shape extending in a plurality of directions when said filaments are substantially free of tension, and a flexible sheet material covering said pad, wherein said cushionable core material comprises a strand-fiber composite material composed of randomly-oriented, essentially uniformlydistributed glass fiber strands interspersed throughout a mass of randomly-oriented and essentially uniformly-distributed individual glass fibers. 